Call Information, Discourse Structure and Levels of Meaning (IDL 12) 25-26 Oct 2012 Barcelona

[Patricia Cabredo Hofherr]

De la part de Maria Teresa Espinal
teresa.espinal at uab.cat

Call for papers for the workshop on  Information, Discourse Structure
and Levels of Meaning (IDL 12)
25-26 October 2012  in Barcelona

More info:http://blogs.uab.cat/idl12/
Deadline for abstracts submissions: 16-Apr-2012

Information and discourse structure, and the analysis of different
levels of meaning (conventional and conversational implicatures,
presuppositions, etc.) have been two of the most fruitful areas of
research in the semantics-pragmatics interface in the last decade.
This workshop aims to study the interactions between these two areas.
Thus, the questions that this workshop will address go in two
directions.

1. How does information and discourse structure affect the different
levels of meaning? Can we obtain a better understanding of, for
instance, conversational implicatures or presuppositions, once the
topic-focus structure is taken into account?
2. How do the dimensions of meaning affect the information structure
of discourse? Can we obtain a better understanding of concepts such as
topic, focus, contrastive topic, background or QUD, once the
properties of the different levels of meaning are taken into account?

Invited speakers:
Daniel Büring (Universität Wien)
Bart Geurts (Radboud University Nijmegen)
Craige Roberts (Ohio State University)
Gregory Ward (Northwestern University)

We invite contributions related (but not limited) to the following topics:
- Recently, there have been proposals to relate the behavior of
conventional implicatures (CIs) and presuppositions to the Question
Under Discussion (Simons et. al. 2011) as a unifying mechanism to
account for their projectivity, while others account for the
projective behavior of CIs through other means (Potts, 2005). What is
the proper account of projective behavior of CIs and presuppositions?
What is the relationship between projectivity and discourse structure?
- The study of information structure has developed quite independently
of the (neo-)Gricean discussion on "what is said" and "what is
implicated". How do notions like focus and topic fit into the classical
Gricean picture? For instance, what is the relationship between
information structure and conversational implicature? Can the
calculation of a conversational implicature depend on the discourse
structure?
- The classical (neo-)Gricean picture stemming from Stalnaker's
contribution strongly restricts the interactions between different
dimensions of meaning. Whereas presuppositions are previous to "what
is said", implicatures are by definition derived from "what is said".
Yet, Geurts (2010) has called for a new picture where (conversational)
implicatures can be derived from presuppositions. How does this new
picture modify the Gricean conception of "what is said", and the
limits between semantics and pragmatics? Which range of interactions
should pragmatics allow?
- Dislocations, particularly in Romance languages, require that the
detached information be either part of the common ground or that it
can be bridged, with remarkable differences between left and right
dislocations. What is the relationship between such bridging phenomena
and presupposition accommodation? Are they the same species?
- The semantic/pragmatic distinction between assertion and
presupposition has commonly been paired with the informational
distinction between new and old information. However, as argued by
Abbott (2010), this view runs into trouble when we consider certain
constructions which combine presupposed and new informational content
(e.g. uniquely identifying descriptions or reverse wh-clefts). To what
extent do these cases are accounted for by the standard Stalnakerian
theory of common ground plus accommodation? Are these cases instances
of Schlenker's 'informative presuppositions' (Schlenker, 2007)?
- The concept of contrast has been claimed to play a role in
information structure, particularly in connection with focus (Rooth
1992, Krifka 2008), but also in cases of (clitic) left-dislocation
(Vallduví 1992, López 2009). To what extent is contrast a
well-de fined concept? Is it a semantic or a pragmatic notion? How
does it interact with presupposition? Does it play any role in
licensing implicatures?

We invite contributions on these aspects for 30′ oral presentations.
Abstracts should conform to the following guidelines:

-Abstracts must be submitted electronically via Easychair:
https://www.easychair.org/account/signin.cgi?conf=idl12
-Abstracts should be anonymous.
-Abstracts should not exceed two pages, including examples and references.
-Submissions are restricted to one single-authored or one co-authored
abstract at most.
-The conference language is English: abstracts and talks will be in English.
-Page format: A4, 2.5 cm margins on all sides, at least 12 pt Times
New Roman font, single line spacing.
-File format: .pdf
-File name: surname.pdf

Organized by Laia Mayol (UPF) and Xavier Villalba (UAB).
IDL12 is an initiative of the funded research project
“Compositionality of meaning and semantic operations at the
syntax-semantics and grammar-cognition interface (COMPOSING)”
(FFI2011-23356).

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